CHAPTER 17 ALEXIS
“On behalf of my client and daughter, Alexis Bodega, I’m happy to announce that she’s safe and healthy. Her husband, baseball player Daniel Brewer, suffered a broken wrist. She’s been by his side caring for him, so I’m here today to dispel rumors that something is wrong with her. Thank you for your time.”
I sit up in my bed and watch it again just to be sure I heard all that correctly.
Is he fucking kidding me?
Danny sits up beside me to watch it, too.
He not only announced my marriage to the world in that little statement of his, but he also announced to the world that Danny has a broken wrist—before he’s even had a chance to tell his teammates, his agent, his management team…
What a disaster.
When I told my father to do what he had to do, I certainly didn’t mean this. I thought he’d let people know I’m fine. Helping a friend, or something along those lines.
This is only going to make things worse. Since we haven’t announced anything yet, we’ll be fielding calls about our marriage, when it happened, when we met, how it happened—on top of how Danny broke his wrist, how long he’ll be out, if he’s thinking about early retirement, blah blah blah.
And to make matters worse, everyone knows I was supposed to marry Brooks a couple weeks ago, and now I turn up married to Danny.
If my father was concerned about my image and brand, he’s absolutely going the wrong way about trying to make anything better.
And he knows it. He said he’d ruin Danny, and he’s so blinded by his desire to do it that he isn’t considering the huge ramifications his words will have on me. He knows my only choice is to make a statement of my own countering his, and that’s why he did it.
To force my hand.
Well, he’s not going to like what I have to say next, that’s for damn sure.
“What do you want to do?” Danny asks. His voice sounds tired, and to be completely honest, I wouldn’t blame him if he just wanted to throw in the towel at this point. My father has done nothing but make things difficult for us over the course of our relationship, and really, all this is still relatively new.
We’re still getting to know each other.
We’re still in the honeymoon phase.
But my dad is trying his hardest to rip all that out from under us.
“I’m sorry, Danny,” I say quietly.
He purses his lips and shakes his head, and then he sinks back into his pillows. “It’s not your fault. He said he was coming for me, and, well, here we are.”
“It’s been a crap day, hasn’t it?”
“I sort of made amends with my dad, and it feels good to just let that shit go.” He shrugs, and he sucks in a deep breath before he lets it go. “I need to tell you something.”
He seems a little nervous, and it makes me nervous.
“What?” I ask.
He draws in a long breath. “I couldn’t sleep last night, and I went downstairs at two in the morning. I went into your dad’s study because he’d been acting suspicious with a piece of paper, so I was looking around his desk to try to figure out what it was. I didn’t find it, but I heard voices coming into the study, so I jumped under his desk. He and Brooks were talking.”
My face scrunches up as I come to terms with that. “At two in the morning?”
“They were having a secret meeting they clearly didn’t want either of us to hear.”
“What did they say?” I ask, my heart suddenly thundering in my chest.
He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth for a beat, and that’s when I know this is bad.
Really bad.
“I was going to wait to tell you. I wanted to gather more information since right now I feel like I’m missing some key pieces.”
“What do you know?” I demand, my voice about an octave higher than usual.
“Brooks is a douchebag and he’s blackmailing your dad.”
My brows pinch together. “For what?”
“I guess your dad made some bad investments, and Brooks said he’d pay those back for him if he got the merger to go through. And he’d pay double if your father could get you to marry him.”
“Bad investments?” I repeat. “What bad investments?”
“That’s the part I’m missing. He said something about how he did it as a favor to Brooks in the first place.”
“So Brooks is the bad guy in all this?” I screech. “Brooks?”
He nods. “Looks like it.”
“So why are my assets frozen?”
He clears his throat. “I don’t think they are, Alexis. I think they’re just…” He trails off as he lifts a shoulder.
“Gone?” I say almost as a joke.
But then he starts to nod slowly, and my heart sinks somewhere into the pit of my stomach.
“I’m so sorry. But…yeah. Anything your dad was managing looks like it’s gone.”
“Holy shit,” I murmur, my heart racing. “He manages most of it. Including payments to Gregory.”
“Then you need to talk to him and figure out where your money went.”
“Does he know you know?” I ask.
He nods. “He told me not to say anything to you until he could figure out what to do, but I told him I wasn’t going to keep secrets from you.”
My racing heart seems to calm a little at that. If nothing else, I have Danny on my side.
But if all my money is gone…
How do I fund my next tour?
How do I fund my next album?
How do I buy that house in San Diego?
I might have some solutions…but I definitely don’t have them all.
“Let’s not tell him I know yet,” I say. “I want to see what move he makes next.”
He nods. “I’m on board for whatever you think is the right way to handle this. And I want to add one more thing.” He pauses, and then he says, “Your dad really does care about you, Lex. I know it’s hard to see it right now, but he’s pissed about you running off and marrying me. Someday he’ll see the light. I have faith in that.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He said last night that I’m better for you than Brooks.”
I gasp. “He said what?” Of all the confessions he just made, that one might be the most shocking.
He nods. “He said at least I’m trying to protect you. And, for the record, I am. And I always will.”
I reach over and squeeze his hand. “I know you will. And that’s why my heart found you and decided it would never let go.”
He leans forward and slides his hand around my neck, pulling me down for a kiss.
I lose myself in his kiss for a bit.
There’s an awful lot we’re up against, but I just have this feeling that we’ll fight through it together.